


untitled

by Enigel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling, The Sandman
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Comment Fic, Community: fandom_stocking, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Luna coped with her mother's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



> Written for Gehayi's fandom_stocking 2009.

There was a loud explosion in the lab, and then Luna's mother would not respond to Luna's cries. This was not strange. Luna's mother would often not reply to Luna, when she was doing her experiments. But she usually heard Luna when she was on the floor, shaking her and screaming in her ear. She wasn't hearing her now, and Luna felt her heart going faster, and her eyes hotter and wet.

"She's with my sister now," said someone. Another girl, with red-yellow-green-blue hair, appeared next to Luna. This was not strange. Sometimes people appeared like that. Sometimes their hair was like that, too.

"Is this why she's not waking up?" asked Luna, a hint of panic sneaking in her voice. It never took mum so long to wake up, not when Luna was shaking her. Once she had to wait for daddy to wake her, just once. Maybe it was like that now.

"Dad will wake her," said Luna aloud.

"No, he won't. Her wings flapped, and then they left. No one comes back after they leave with my sister," the girl said, and her hair turned violet-blue-green.

"If she's your sister, tell her to bring her back, please!"

"She can't. Your eyes are raining."

"I'm crying," said Luna resentfully. "Leave me alone! If you won't bring her back, leave me alone!" she cried louder.

Luna turned her back to the strange girl, but peeked in the mirror to see what she was doing. Her hair was going from yellow to red to violet to green, and a cloud of winged mice appeared around her head.

Luna felt a hand on her shoulder. A mouse scurried along the hand to stand on her shoulder. This was not strange, her mother could make that anytime.

"My mum can make a mouse ten times bigger, and with bigger wings."

Her mum couldn't make anything anymore. She'd left, and she wasn't coming back. Luna believed the girl. Her eyes filled with hot tears and the girl dissolved in rivulets of yellow-red-pink-violet.

"I can make it not rain," the girl said. "I can make it not hurt."

Luna sniffed.

"Really?"

"Really!" The winged mice whirled in a flurry of tails and feathers around the girl's head. "Cross my hair and hope to fly!"

Her hair made, indeed, as if to fly.

"But there's something. A prize? A slice? A pear-slice?"

"A price?" tried Luna.

"Yes, that's it! A price."

"What kind of price?"

"I don't know, but my sister said I should tell people that there's always a slice. Price."

"What _kind_ of price?"

The girl's blue eye looked up, while the green was squinting.

"I don't know. Something like, if you have a mouse and make it a butterfly, you can't make it a squirrel." While she spoke, the mice around her head turned into butterflies, then squirrels. "Though _I_ can," she said dubiously, "so I don't know about that. Anyway, that kind of prize. Price."

Luna looked at her mother again. She thought she saw her move, but it was only the rain in her eyes. It was hurting pretty bad, so maybe the price was worth it.

"Fine," she told the girl, but when she turned to look at her, there were only the mice, landing softly in a cloud of red-yellow-violet wings.

This was not strange, thought Luna, not strange at all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Unititled](https://archiveofourown.org/works/734593) by [SisterOfWar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SisterOfWar/pseuds/SisterOfWar)




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